Put in a bowl that just holds it with half a cup of heavy soya sauce and half a cup of cheapest dry vermouth (I buy at Lidl)

Leave in fridge to marinate for min 1 hour.† (if you don’t cook all the meat at once, you can leave in the marinade for two or three days covered in cling film turning occasionally.† It gets better and better!)†

Put a couple of tablespoons oil in the frying pan†

Heat until smoking hot†

Dry the meat well with paper towels and place in frying pan.†

Turn it when each side is well seared, browned and sealed including ends.† This

probably takes about three minutes altogether depending how hot the pan is.†

Remove from pan and put in dish in the warming oven (if you have a four-oven Aga

put in top of bottom left oven) with the dinner plates for about ½ an hour minimum.† It will continue to cook very gently and will be very tender and rare to medium rare.† If you cook it just before guests arrive, it will happily sit in the oven until you have had drinks and your first course.†

Before serving, deglaze the frying pan with more vermouth or wine or use the marinade, add enough good venison stock (or water if you have no stock) to make sauce for the numbers you are feeding, scrape in the residue from frying the meat so that you have a rich sauce.† To thicken (if you wish) mix a teaspoon of cornflour with a little water in a cup and then added to the sauce.† You can add rowan or red currant jelly – a few tablespoons to taste – or some port.† Taste and season.†

Take meat from oven, carve into slices about a centimetre thick and serve with the sauce, potatoes and fine beans, or with a salad.† A red cabbage dish goes well with venison, too.†

If you have a good butcher/game dealer and know that the venison is of high quality, you can do what I sometimes do with a haunch; instead of roasting it whole, I divide the muscles up and remove the membrane of each and marinate as above and cook as above.† Best to cut large muscles into fillet sized lengths.† You can experiment and see how you get on.†

The most important thing is not to overcook venison.† If it is too rare for you, you can always cook it a little longer but you can’t put it right if it is overcooked!†